I keep thinking

I am wasting time. Keep thinking I am not doing enough. Castigate myself for appointments cancelled, tasks I could've, would've, should've ticked off my list today, but didn't get to - because.

Because the dance of green leaves with sunlight outside my window was too compelling. Because I couldn't release the pain of the article I read on child soldiers in Uganda, the Congo, Liberia. Because a crescent moon hung in the scented summer sky and lured me into the hills. Because the promise of "ethics training" for US soldiers, as a palliative for the massacre in Haditha, makes me want to throw up. Because Babbe Karade Ishq on my CD player snaked up my feet into my hips, lifted me out of my desk to move to the beat. Because I'm scared to make this call, send this email, submit this piece of work.

Then the poem comes. Rises out of a moment in a bookshop, an instant on the street corner. Unfurls in my torso, unclenches my fingers, rolls itself onto paper. It is messy and fragmented, it needs work, it is whole and perfect in its reaching.

And I learn all over again what I forget daily:
Nothing is wasted.
Nothing is unintentional.
You are exactly
where you are meant to be,
doing what you are meant to do.